


The Other Ones

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-30
Updated: 2009-09-30
Packaged: 2019-10-29 21:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Faith could tell something wasn’t cool in Chez Buffy, but she can't look the other way when she finds an injured vampire on Slayer grounds.





	The Other Ones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cozzybob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cozzybob/gifts).



> This is for  
> Cozzybob, who asked: I want hurt, bruised, and sad Spike interacting with Faith, but Faith shouldn't be the one who hurt him. She CAN take advantage, though... what girl wouldn't? *purrs* Add any or no kink you want, it's all good.
> 
> After a few false starts, I set this in season 8. Sorta. You know, nods to comics canon, but nothing much that happened there, happened.
> 
> Faith/Spike, h/c, rated R for nudity and language - Faith cusses rather a lot when I write her. 
> 
> There might be a tiny bit of implied Buffy bash here - really it's all in what you read into it. ;)

Faith could tell something wasn’t cool in Chez Buffy. Things hadn’t been cool for a long time, between General Buffy Takes on the World and (gasp) negative press.  
  
When Spike came back, Faith thought it was going to get better. Like, holy resurrection, batman! He arrived bedraggled, still soot-stained and telling tales of LA brought to Hell and, quite frankly, not enough supernatural catastrophes and apocalypses to explain not calling when his dead ass got back in touch with this plane of existence.  
  
Still, Faith assumed he’d get right on that doe-eyed love train and shake Buffy out of her stress-cocoon. Instead they started all over again with the long meaningful looks and over-polite crap. But when Faith did what any sensible woman with a working hormone system would and tried to get her leg over on the seemingly unwanted boypire…  
  
Yeah. Faith could still feel that battle in her right wrist, especially on cold days, and there were a shit-load of cold days in Scotland.  
  
But maybe it was worth it, because Generalisma Buffy dragged her vampire boy-toy home right after, and his stuff was out of the guest room by the end of the week.  
  
Finally, Faith thought, Buffy would get some and stop being so uptight.  
  
But no, uptightness continued, only now with a silent Spike in tow, who was starting to look as broody as Angel.  
  
(Faith had half a mind to leave this pop stand and find where Angel was holed up – still back in LA, they said. And there was something about a kid? Vampires settling down and having families wasn’t anything her watchers had prepared her for.)  
  
It was bad enough having to attend meetings – MEETINGS, for fuck’s sake – she also had to put up with the oh-so-subtle hierarchy of Buffy > Scoobies > Everyone Else, where Faith was in “Everyone Else”. She was the Chosen One, too, but it’s that “too” that invalidated it all.  
  
Not that Faith was the kind to be bitter about that. She wasn’t. She just wanted a little appreciation now and then, or at least a day off. Thousands of slayers and the work wasn’t any less. It was more, because now organizing the slayers themselves was work.  
  
So, yeah – all was not well in Slayerville, and tensions were making the castle feel as tight as a double-wide. (In some respects it was – lots of space, not a lot of it in the private rooms. Faith’s own room was smaller than her first apartment, and the walls carried a chill so you really only used the center space.)  
  
She couldn’t be sure if they were fighting, really – the castle walls did have one thing over trailer living: excellent soundproofing. But there was something subdued in Spike’s behavior in public, and something in how he always looked at Buffy before answering when asked a question… something that wasn’t just explained by “true love”.  
  
Or maybe she was a cynical woman, getting older and less forgiving every minute, and if an assignment in Florida or some other sunny place didn’t come up soon she was going to lose her mind.  
  
And then she found him in the garden.  
  
Faith was jogging around the perimeter of the property – it was part daily exercise, part “leave me the fuck alone” after a long afternoon teaching baby slayers which end of the stake goes in the vampire. At first she thought it was just a pile of rubbish, dead leaves or whatever, raked up against the garden wall. But her over-active imagination turned any random object in the night into a vampire, so she jogged over to it, prepared to kick leaves and relieve her mind.  
  
She was shocked to have been right in the first place. Vampire. Only not the dangerous kind. His platinum-blonde hair shone in the moonlight, even with one arm draped over his face.  
  
Faith crouched. “Hey.” She nudged his shoulder. “Sleepyhead. Dorm’s that way.”  
  
He started to turn toward her, then seemed to think better of it and roll the other way. Still, she saw the bruising when he moved his arm.  
  
She grabbed his wrist and made him look at her. “What happened?”  
  
His lips were puffy, a small cut crusted over with dried blood. He opened them, shut them, looked away. “Rough training session. Let a bloke catch some kip, will you?”  
  
He struggled, but she easily turned him onto his back, straddling his chest. “Bullshit,” she said. “I was leading the training sessions today.”  
  
“Private training session,” he said, teeth gritted, and she knew it was a lie.  
  
She stood and held a hand down to him. “Fine. I don’t care what you kids call it, but I’m not leaving you out here. With our luck, Scotland could get its first sunny day of the year tomorrow and we’d be out a champion.”  
  
She became aware of the extent of his injuries as she tried to get him to his feet. He started laughing after his second fall. Faith was not so easily amused. She swung him over her shoulders. “Asshole. You men get hurt and don’t even give a damn about the person who has to haul your broken asses indoors.”  
  
“My angel of mercy,” he said, slurred and sarcastic, and Faith wondered if he was a little bit drunk.  
  
Buffy and Spike lived on the other side of the castle, not that she would have taken him up there anyway – they were up a long flight of stairs. She took him to her own little room and dumped him on the bed. “Don’t bleed on anything,” she said, and dug through her sock drawer for the little first aid kit she kept.  
  
“It wasn’t Buffy,” he said.  
  
She turned to look at him.  
  
Spike was half-way on his side, on the bed, as close to sitting as he could support himself. He was looking down at his hands. “That’s what you’re thinking. Can see it. But it’s not…. Not her.”  
  
Faith bit her tongue on a smart reply. He looked so defeated. “Hey,” she said, with false cheer, “I wasn’t thinking one way or another. Let’s just get you splinted up before you heal all crooked, okay? I don’t want to ruin the view. Five hundred horny slayers would kill me.”  
  
She was rewarded with a little smile, and Spike sank back on the mattress, content, for the time, to be ministered to.  
  
He was wearing a black sweater – apparently even vampires got chilly. She pulled it off him, with much moaning and attempted help. His left arm was broken, the lower part obviously not moving when he wanted it to, and he hissed a short, indrawn breath whenever she touched it. His right wrist was stiff, and the fingers curled, corpse-like when she tried to straighten them.  
  
“Ow! Bloody bitch!”  
  
Faith smiled. “Well, now you’re responding. So, are you going to tell me who it  _was_?”  
  
There was a pregnant pause. She finally got the sweater off and started working on his t-shirt underneath. For once, it was annoying that he wore such skin-tight clothes.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, lifting his arms as well as he could to let her get the shirt off.   
  
“Yeah, well, it’s no skin off my nose, but have you been here lately? There’s probably a form we gotta fill out and a memo to distribute: this week’s vampire violence, or something.”  
  
She had her hands on his waistband now – ah, bluejeans, such memories she had undoing those top buttons.  
  
Spike was looking down his bare chest at her, his expression unreadable. There was bruising on his nose and just enough around his cheekbones and eyes to really bring out the icy blue color. She popped the top rivet with her thumb. “Should probably do your legs first, babe. I don’t plan on you staying here all night.”  
  
He nodded, shallowly, and swallowed. “Sorry I can’t help.” His voice was a little raspy, she noticed.  
  
The ‘damaged bad boy’ look really had something going for it.  
  
His right foot was mostly undamaged so he was able to help kick off his boots, but the jeans stuck to blood along his left shin and almost became a lost cause. Faith gave up on being careful and put some slayer strength behind it. The jeans didn’t look like they were salvageable, anyway.  
  
She looked up to see his eyes closed, his bottom lip caught in his teeth, his brow wrinkled.  
  
She left him naked on the bed and gathered up some splints. There was nothing sexy about tending wounds, and she was a little bitter about just how much first aid practice she’d had over the years. She forced bones back into place and wrapped them up tight. Most of the damage was on the left. Right-handed opponent. Not that that really narrowed things down. But she did notice he didn’t have any abrasions on his knuckles. Dumbass, she almost said. You wouldn’t catch her not fighting back, no matter what the sitch.  
  
He gave a choked shout, body folding forward as she pulled his shin back into alignment. Mmm… strong abs, but the flexing was probably involuntary. She pushed him back down with one hand and finished the job.  
  
That done, she shifted to sit next to him, her hand still on his chest. “That’s that. You’ll live.”  
  
He coughed a sort of laugh. “That’d be a miracle.”  
  
“Fine, un-live, whatever. So do I get any kind of story for my selfless good dead, here?”  
  
She stroked his stomach, enjoying the feeling of tensed muscles and nervous man. (Ah, the best things in life were another woman’s.) He was looking away, giving some prime avoidance cues. She shifted, half-laying next to him, and touched his cheek, turning him to face her. “Hey, I don’t care. You got something you want to say, you’ll say it, eventually. If you don’t, well, I was never much for talking anyway.”  
  
Her lips touched his and he flinched back. “No,” he said.  
  
“You probably get this a lot, but you’re sexy when you say ‘no’.”  
  
That got her a small eye-roll. He shifted back on the bed. “Faith, I know there haven’t been any vows, any promises, or hell, even a public acknowledgement…”  
  
“Yeah, I think you should stop right there. Because, see, if you don’t get what you want, why should she get what she wants?”  
  
Pressed together lips. Oh, there was an answer. Faith swung her leg over him and pushed him down, gently, to the bed. “So how come we can’t get what we want, huh? What’s wrong with us that we’re always the other ones, the second string?”  
  
“Faith,” he said, and his eyes were glistening a little. Oh, she’d landed a mark there.  
  
“Seems to me you at least owe me a kiss for not leaving you out there for the wolves to find.” She paused, frowning. “Does Scotland have wolves?”  
  
He smiled. His broken hand rested against her shoulder, though whether to pull her closer or keep her at distance, she couldn’t tell. "Five hundred randy slayers," he said.   
"Who was it? Was it Joanne? I bet it was Joanne. Always slinking around the end of staking theory to talk to you..."  
She trailed off, seeing genuine panic in his eyes. "What is it, Blondie? What am I not getting?"  
  
"Yes or no doesn't matter anymore. I'm damned for being looked at. Damned for hiding. Damned for trying to break their hearts gently." He tilted his head, all soft eyes, and wasn't that a trick? "You should know hearts don't break gentle."  
  
This was getting too heavy for her. Faith wriggled down, smirking to lighten the mood. "So if you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, what's wrong with 'do'? I still haven't gotten my thank-you kiss."  
  
“All right,” he said, chin tilted up. “You deserve it.”  
  
“Don’t I know it.”   
  
It was obvious as she pressed her lips to his that he intended this to be a chaste, good-deed-rewarding kiss, all lips dry and closed, but Faith persisted. She ran her hand through his tangled hair, sticky with blood and hair gel. She gripped his head and pressed him to her when he tried to back away. Her lips and tongue worked on him, demanding entry until at last, with a sigh, he granted it.  
  
She let her hands roam over him, hard muscle and soft skin, punctuated by rough bandages. He started to fight, to try to get away, but gave in.   
  
He gave in so sweetly. Faith would never be one to rough a guy up before sex – that was for during – but damn she could see the appeal in that helpless surrender.  
  
Yeah, all was not well at Chez Slayer, but fuck it, Faith thought, you only live once.


End file.
